Mary+Bailek


 * SUMMARY: Mary Bailek, age 23, died September 15, 1926 after an abortion perpetrated in Chicago, purportedly by midwife Rozalia Ossowska.**

On September 15, 1926, 23-year-old Mary Bailek, a native of Poland, died at Chicago's Lutheran Deaconnes Hospital from complications of a criminal abortion performed at her home that day.

Rozalia Ossowska, alias Olszewski, was arrested for the death on October 7. Her profession is not given but according to the 1930 Census she was a midwife. She was born around 1888 in Germany and immigrated to the US in 1906.

On the 15th of March, 1927, she was indicted for felony murder by a grand jury.

The mantra among abortion-rights organizations is that before legalization, the world of abortion was a world of rusty coathangers and untrained quacks. Frankly, it's an insult to the abortion-minded women of yesteryear to assume that they were all so mentally unhinged or utterly mindless. The vast majority sought out professionals of the same caliber they'd go to for any other cause. Thus, Mary sought out a midwife, the same sort of person a woman like her would have gone to for any obstetric or gynecological issue.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future.In fact, these medical advances made amazing strides in reducing maternal mortality in general, and abortion mortality specifically, during the 20th century long before legalization. Legalization, in fact, doesn't even make a blip in the trend that had long been in place. Crediting the efforts of abortion-advocacy groups for improved maternal safety is an insult to the many people who worked hard to accomplish so much in the areas of public health, nutrition, and medicine.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion].

Source:


 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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